It has been more than twenty days since I got my shipment and I was still wondering how much I had to end up paying for Customs here in India. I finally decided to call up the DHL office and asked them how much I had to pay. So here is how much my Kindle finally worked out to:

Kindle 3: 6,500

Shipping: 1,000 (it took less than 3 days from dispatch to delivery)

Customs: 2,160

Total: 9,660

The figures above are in approximate INR.

I know this is high (the customs almost killed me) and could have been just below 7,000 had someone got it along for me. But I do not mind paying a premium for getting it two months or more early had I depended on someone else. And anyway it is still much cheaper than any other e-reader available in India. And undoubtedly the best there is.

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It has been a little more than 3 weeks now that I have been using my Kindle 3 and I have loved every day of it! It is an absolute joy to read a book and seamlessly got to another one once I done with it or if I just need a change from a certain book. The best part is, it fits right into my trouser pocket. This helps a lot while travelling in the Mumbai trains and buses as I don’t need to put it back in my bag everytime.

I have been able to use most of the feature till now except the music player. But this only shows that the quality of the reader is so good that I don’t really care about the music that much. I have my cell phone for that. I have been using Calibre as my ebook management software. It has worked like a charm all this while. It has helped me tag and sort all my ebooks. It also converts all my ebooks (except PDF) into the format which Kindle would understand. PDFs have to be copied as is and are also read as is. The best feature however by a country mile for me is its ability to download feeds from news sites and compile them into an ebook format with a table of contents! This I have configured to be mailed directly from Calibre to my kindle email id, which automatically converts them into the .AZW format. These books are then put into my archives and downloaded the next time I connect via WiFi. This email conversion feature is however chargeable if you have bought a 3G Kindle.

The browser is something that I have been asked about by a few people. The Webkit browser is pretty cool in its basic abilities. It is however a little cumbersome to do anything more than read on it. So you can read your mails and login to your facebook/twitter accounts to read updates and maybe tweet a little. Reading blogs is easy with the ‘Article Mode’ feature enabled. It clips the blogs by removing side images and making it easy to read. But anything other than black text again becomes a little difficult to read. Apart from this, the best idea is to browse mobile avatars of traditional sites (like m.gmail.com) and they would be a breeze to read. But I would discourage anyone who wants to buy this based on the ability to browse. It is a workable feature but not robust enough to be a selling point yet. Buy it for its ability to be the best at being an ebook reader.

I have not heard from Amazon yet about my customs refund and hence have no update on that.

To sum it up, I am more than happy about my Kindle. What I do not like that much is the stares I get when I am reading in public. What I hate more is the number of people who stop me from reading by asking me questions about the thing I am holding in my hand. I would really recommend everyone to buy a cover if you can afford it. I did not and am going to buy one soon. I doubt I would get one locally for the Kindle 3. This surely makes people believe that you are reading a regular book and not staring at what appears to be a slate!

Please do leave comments if you are planning to buy a Kindle here in India and I will try and answer as best as possible.

P.S. I will try and post a few screenshots of the Kindle in my next post.

If you think my review helped and would want to buy the Kindle, please use the below links: